Taking a Break

After a series of beautiful days, with plenty of sun, leavened by clouds and enough rain to bring bursts of green all over, I will be taking a break,  I'm off to Virginia for a conference.  I hope to post again on June 30.  I am grateful to those following this journal.  If for some reason you miss the daily images, I suggest looking back to the winter months, just as a reminder of the miracle of spring and summer.  See you soon!

Lone Leaf

A single heart-shaped 

yellow leaf rode the current,

then sank out of sight.

Morning Has Broken

Blue on Blue

                      With the latest rain over, the blue appeared, light above, dark on the river.

A Long Soft Day

With the longest day approaching, this picture taken at 7:30 p.m. may be the latest-in-the-day shot of this project so far.  When faced with light, almost misty rain, the Irish call it a "soft day."  We had a soft day in the north country.  The river rose and and as always carried more countryside away.

Having explored a few of the Ottauquechee's tributaries, I can envision the rivulets bulging up their banks. I can see the tiny defiles under the trees filling and flowing, joining the real stream beds,

We crossed and recrossed the Connecticut today.  The great river fairly glowed with its meal of forest earth.

Quiet Morning

A quiet Sunday morning on the river.

River and Roads

Today I followed the Ottauquechee valley up Rt. 4 on my way to Rutland.  The state highway weaves back and forth across the river from Quechee to Killington.  There the road diverges. Heading west on Rt. 4, you must take a right on River Road to continue to follow the river up to its headwaters in the hills opposite the big mountain.  One of these days, I'll take that right and follow the river up as far as I can.

Returning in the early afternoon, I spotted half a dozen kids tubing on the river just downstream from the Woodstock Rt. 4 bridge.

Mirror Image

As the water carries less silt, the mirror quality of the river intensifies.  This morning, cloud reflections, filtered sunlight, tree shadows, bank shadows and the ripples of a breeze paint a lively surface on the Ottauquechee.

Clearing

Between days of rain, the river clears and drops.

Old, Old River

My question for the Ottauquechee has been, "What is it like for you?"  I have been trying to wrap my mind around the antiquity of the river.   The glacier which receded past this watershed about 13,000 years ago shaped many details of its current course, the Quechee gorge being the most spectacular feature of that era.

Thirteen thousand years is a long time for humans, some of whom may have even seen the melting ice flowing through a landscape nearly bare of vegetation after the hard glacial scouring.  The river itself predated the glaciers, and its origin in time fades into a far deeper past.  According to the sources I have read, the underlying rock which became the Green Mountains found their way here from 400 million to 450 million years ago.  The tall rounded hills we now see were once far underground.  The power of erosion works through water, reducing the heights by fractions of an inch each year,  The rain falling finds the softer places, faults and more soluble veins of rock, and there streams form.  An Ottauquechee carved its way down the eastern slope of what is now Killington mountain.  Millions of years ago, the river scored the landscape with freshets, floods and the perpetual motion of gravity-driven mineral-rich water.  It continues today, in bright sun, after yet another sate of rain and burst of silt.

Torrential Rain

Today's rain filled the river again with silt.  The work of erosion never stops.

Broad Brook

I have been looking at the USGS topographical maps for the Ottauquechee watershed.  These show the many tributaries, large and small, named and unnamed. One of the bigger feeder streams, Broad Brook, enters the Ottauquechee just east of Bridgewater Corners.  The brook begins on the east slope of Blueberry Hill in Plymouth.  In the middle of the township, the hill forms the boundary with the Black River watershed.  The headwaters of the latter flow just other side of that hill, slowing down for a time to form the string of lakes on Rt. 100.  The Black flows to the Connecticut through Springfield.  The watersheds of the Black to the south and the White to the north frame the Ottauquechee territory.

Hazy

This morning in the narrow Barnard Brook valley, the temperature fell below freezing.  I don't know if ice formed along the edges of that Ottauquechee tributary or not. At 1 p, m,, with the thermometer at about 70, hazy sun lit the river, clearer after taking the last rain's load of sediment downstream.

Beginning the River

With last night's rain, the river thickend up again, growing browner as the day progressed.  On the surface, tiny white flower petals flowed, sharp against the earthy water.

Today, we drove along the road through Barnard Gulf, which crosses from the White River to the Ottauquechee watershed.  Gulf Stream, an Ottauquechee tributary, begins here.  I took the picture below of one of the many headwaters which form the roots of this river and the great Connecticut.

 

Tiny rivulet

barely visible among

leaves, light, rock and woods.



Two Geese

Before I walked on to the bridge this morning, I could hear repeated honks from the Canada geese. Having counted the six adults and eleven goslings crossing the stream last night, I was hoping to see them again.  Today, two adults swam near the bend by the rapids, honking again and again, until one went with the flow downriver.  The other remained another minute or two, still crying out, and then went after the first, out of sight, round the bend.  I saw no other geese then, or this evening.

Two Boys and Seventeen Geese

When two boys strolled along the left bank this evening, three sets of Geese parents and eleven goslings took to the water in their family groups, paddling across the river and downstream.  They stayed in the quiet water and climbed out at the base of the History Center lawn.

Twilight in Early June

After traversing several southern and central New England watersheds in the past days, we returned to the Ottauquechee and the Middle Bridge at about 8:30 p.m., when I took this picture, with barely enough light.  I spotted two sets of Canada geese parents, with a collection of goslings, on the left bank near the the river bend.